I was thinking about personal deflector shields. Like in Sci-Fi movies they have personal "aura", if you will. In Star Trek they have shields around the ships too. Ok, those movies/series where they have personal shields, and nothing can penetrate them, I got one question: How do they breathe? How does the shield protect against light beams, phazers and photon torpedos, yet it lets the air through?
In Dune it's explainable in some way. Slowly moving objects pass the shield. So slowly moving air would pass. But Arakis is a desert planet with high velocity winds. How does that work in such conditions? In David Lynch's movie Dune they have square shields (quite impossible to create) so if the high velocity wind doesn't penetrate it, it would go around the shield and create an air pocket of almost still air behind the object. This might be the way to get this to work. But those shields must be round, not square. It would be unusefull and more difficult to create square shields instead of round ones. And round objects would have less of the slow moving air behind them, thus having less possibilities for the air to pass.
But if there's a filter that separates photons and matter from gases, then how about gas weapons? If they would shoot high temperature water in gas form through the shield, they can easily burn the shielded alive. Or poison them with poison gases. If it would have such sophisticated filter, that can quickly enough filter only oxygen, why not make an ozone weapon? Shoot the shield full of ozone. That should do it.
If you have a heart of stone, and someone melts your heart, do you then have chest full of lava or love? And when it cools down, does it turn into a heart of glass?
NY Times, MSNBC, IOL and Free Internet Press published a post Stephen Hawking is taking a head-start to weightlessness. He'll be on Boeing 727, and I guess the method is the same as in filming of Apollo 13 -movie. Boeing flies up high and makes a dive. You'll have like 30 seconds of weightlessness then. Would be cool. But I want to go to space.
See you in space, Stephen.
My housemate was watching Yellow Submarine yesterday. As I was going to shower I started to listen to the movie too. I heard the thing about time travel in the movie while I was shaving in the bathroom. They got smaller and smaller as they went back in time. Also their moustache vanished. As they went back to the future (or present time) they grew back. (Both, the Beatles and their moustaches.)
This made me think. If you would shave your face, then travel back in time and you get younger and younger. When you go past (or before, however you wanna think about it) your puberty and your hair growth stops, you stop the time travel there. Then travel back to the future, or the present, anyways, to what now is now.
Does your beard, fingernails and hair grow that long as you would never cut them before?
And if they grow, where does the energy come from? Otherwise, the energy to grow back must be there somewhere when you are young (but where?), but as you have cut fingernails and hair along your live, the matter is lost - where does the energy come from when you travel back to your own time? I think you might be quite hungry then.
Hm.. Maybe this could be a perfect weight-loss treatment. Go back in time, then travel back into the present and transform fat into hair and fingernails and simply cut the extra fat off like hair.
Also, as H. G. Wells wrote in "The Time Machine" (1895), you can't change the past. As in, you can't just check the lottery numbers and go back in time to tell them to yourself. Since from where you came, it didn't happen.
You can meet your friends in the past, like in The Time Machine. So can you meet yourself, like Hunter S. Thompson in a club in San Francisco? If you can, can you shake hands with yourself, or do you vanish, like in van Damme's Time Cop? And if you vanish, where does the matter go? And if you can meet yourself, shake hands with your self and have a conversation with yourself, do you remember shaking hands with yourself twice when you go back to your own time from the past? (1st time in the past, 2nd time when you travel to the past.)
Men are from Mars, women are from Venus.
What? You mean some are barren and unchanging and the others are toxic and full of sulphur?
I was asked this question (again) a short while ago. "Is half a cup, half full or half empty?" Tough question. I had to think about it and yes, there is a difference. It depends which way the level of liquid is going. If you fill the cup only halfway, it is half full, as you didn't fill it right up to the top. If, however, you fill it completely, and then drink it to the halfway, it is half empty. You can's fill a cup half empty, and you can't drink a cup half full.
There's an exception to this. If you are drinking your drink, say, in a bar, and you forget your glass on the table. Then you turn back to it, it can have both, half full and half empty conditions depending on your memory (or optimism/pessimism). If you thought "gosh, I need to get another drink in a while, as my drink was almost finished" and you see the half-filled glass, you shout in your head: "Hey! It's still half-full!" - If, on the other hand you're thinking "ah, still got almost a full glass, lemme take a sip... Hey! It's already half empty!"
My conclusion is: A pessimist would have a half full cup, while an optimist would have a half empty one.
I can only blame myself on this one. I had the exact idea of a mobile phone design as this Irish guy.
With my old Nokia 3210, that had thin keypad side and thick screen side, it was more natural in my hand the other way around. My palms gave support to the whole phone, and the screen was not hanging in the air.
Also, this way your hands are protecting the screen. If you text or read text messages in a train, the guy sitting next to you can't see the screen.
Why, oh, why didn't I patent this idea back then? Stupid, stupid, stupid.
This morning when I was about to go to work, I stepped outside of my door and lit a cigarette. I heard a splash maybe a metre and a half away from me. As if a small apple would've fallen from relatively high. I looked around, but there was nothing. Except a tiny grey thing on the ground. I stepped forward and noticed it was a mouse.
It was laying on it's side and twitching. The hindlegs were twitching as if the mouse would have an epileptic seizure or something. From that I knew at least it's spine was fine. But where did it come from? There's only a building next to me. I assume it was either climbing the wall somehow and fell, or walking on the roof and slipped. I was thinking should I kill it and end it's misery or leave it there. I decided to wait a bit and see.
It stopped the twitching, but looked like it was still conscious. Moving a bit. It started to stretch itself, and eventually turned itself on it's belly. Then it just ran off. A bit slowly for a mouse, but nevertheless, it ran away. The only thing was the behind of the mouse was going a bit on the side and the hindlegs were quite wide. I guess it'll recover. Didn't seem to break even a bone.
I seriously didn't see that coming.
Stepping outside of your door and a mouse falls from the sky right next to you.
...Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Amsterdam...
Day before yesterday I invented couple of games. Yesterday we had to test-out the pool version. It works pretty ok.
Kind of reversed games. I like carambola, but there's not that many tables around. So I had to invent new rules to pool to get some of the carambola-feel into it.
Suicide-Chess
Note: Found out that this has been already invented in this exact form: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_chess (Added 2nd March. 2007)
Pieces move the same way as in the normal chess. King has no special value, it can be "eaten" at any point of the game. The rules are simple. You need to get rid of your pieces. If you can eat something, you must. If you have multiple choices, you can choose which piece you'll eat on your turn. But if you can, you must. Who has no pieces left is the winner.
Tip: Get rid of your queen as quickly as possible.
Carampool
This is kind of mixture between pool (8-ball), carambola and Finnish Korona. Played on a normal pool table. Each player takes 7 balls. One takes the numbers 1-7 and the other 9-15. You place the balls on your side of the table. On the line, where you normally would put the white ball in equal spaces. So seven balls on each side of the table, on the line. White ball in the middle of the table. Small numbers starts.
The idea is to shoot one of your balls, hit the white ball and then drop any of your opponent's balls down. Any ball can drop any of your opponent's balls, but you must hit the white ball first. Yes, it might be weird to shoot with a number ball and hitting the white ball with that, but that's how this goes.
If the white ball goes down, you lift it on the table. The one who's turn it is can choose where he wants to put it. In the middle, or on either of the spots on the lines on each side of the table. If a spot is not free, like in the beginning only the middle is free, then you can't put the white there, before it gets free. If all three places are occupied by another balls, then you can place it only in the middle, as close as possible.
If you drop the white ball or don't hit the white ball first, but you also drop one of your opponent's balls, it (the opponent's ball) is then lifted back on the table. If the table is one of those pay-per-play tables that don't give the balls out, then first you can lift 8-ball and after that the one who made the mistake looses one ball. There has to be some consequences in errors, otherwise you could "accidentally" drop all of your opponent's balls incorrectly.
You don't lift a ball if you put your own ball down. That's not a mistake, but you just can't continue. Same goes, if you don't hit the white ball first, but nothing goes down, you just can't continue.
The last ball is not lifted on the table. If you pocket the last ball incorrectly, you lose. If you have one ball left (pay-per-play -version) and you do a mistake pocketing your opponent's ball incorrectly, you lose.
Carambola skills are usefull in this, and also you need to be extra accurate, as the opponent can shoot his ball away if it's next to a pocket. As long as he hits the white ball with that one.
Optional rules: If you don't hit the white ball first, and nothing goes down, the opponent can then put the white ball on any of the three spots.
Footbasketpool
The name might give you a hint... It's kind of mixture between football (soccer), basketball and pool. Normal soccer field, but junior size - or not. Football in the middle, and the idea is to get the ball into the opponent's goal. How to get it there is different. I have two variations of it. The first one requires a bit of customizing of the equipments.
1. Each player has a ball, that has been attached to the wrists with two elastic bands. Short enough, that you don't trip over when you run, but long and elastic enough that you can hit the football with it.
2. I think this is more interesting way, and it doesn't require any special/custom equipment. Each team has 7 balls. Each team different color. You're not allowed to touch other team's balls. You can throw or roll the balls. You can also pass the balls to the other team members if they don't have a ball, but are closer or in better position to the football.
The idea is then that you are not allowed to touch the white football with anything else, except with another ball. Throwing or rolling your ball and hitting the football with that and getting it into the goal is the ... well... goal of this game. And of course the team which scores the highest, wins.
Note: The name "Suicide-Chess" has been changed from "Kamikaze-Chess" due to the fact similar game, Kamikaze-Chess was already invented in early 1900's.
My sister just told me that she's getting married and I'm gonna be an uncle.
My baby sister. She was underaged when I left Finland. I guess the image in my head was still that sweet-innocent little girl. But on the other hand she has been dating this guy from Peru for like 7 years now. I guess it was about time for this.
...And I'm gonna be an uncle.
Feels weird. So from now on, you can call me Uncle-Sami.
Stephen Hawkins is planning to take Virgin Galactic tour to space, too!
Read more on Yahoo!
Remember to support my attempts to go to space with my Send Sami To Space -project.
I stubled upon an article in BBC acrhives. It was interesting to read, but I was thinking there might be some idea behind it. So I googled a bit and I came a cross with couple of writings here and here. So I decided to post my thoughts to these kind of americans:
Kurva, I tried to check the official language. So I went to CIA.gov, chose The World Factbook and chose United States. Under the section "People" it has a paragraph that is about languages:
English 82.1%, Spanish 10.7%, other Indo-European 3.8%, Asian and Pacific island 2.7%, other 0.7%
So what's the official language? Scheisse, it didn't state it here. That's odd. Och sen jag ska titta här: Finland. Tiny county in the middle of nowhere. The same part states:
Finnish 92% (official), Swedish 5.6% (official), other 2.4% (small Sami- and Russian-speaking minorities)
Wait a second. Finnish and Swedish are official languages? It states it there. So USA doesn't have an official language?
Maybe it's Navajo or Cherokee... Ich weiss nicht.
Finland stands as a bilingual country. And it works fine. The ratio 9 to 0.5 is quite large, but finnish speak swedish also. It's mandatory in school to study also swedish. There's 8 to 1 ratio between english and spanish in the States. The gap is much smaller than in Finland, so I would recommend for all those in the States to learn english and spanish. Now, go and check what it says for South Africa and check the ratios on those languages...
Majority is english in the States. (English comes from England, you know. Now say "thanks, UK, for your lovely language.") So it would be wise for the traveller to know the local language a bit. It may not be a necessity, but it makes life easier. I haven't lived in that many countries, but at least I can get my uno cerveza, adim pivo, ein bier bitte, pint o' laagah mate, una birra, een bier astublieft, en öl tack, yksi olut...
You can survive with english-only in Europe, but it just makes it easier to know the local language. Except in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. They really enjoy speaking english, which makes it really hard to learn the language. Maar ik prata een beetje. Deutch is auch schweer, aber ich spreche ein bichen Deutch. Auch.
Mental note: "Jalla jalla, hajaku hajaku, biaaatch... learn proper dutch already!"
But in any case. Don't get scared of the amount of the languages in the world. Be brave. Visit Europe for example. Trust me, it'll be grand. We don't bite and we do speak english. Among other languages.
And if you're planning to raise a point about "Europe is different countries, USA is one." Check wikipedia for EU. Yes, independent countries, but still a Union.
Post Script. If you do visit, try not to get angry when you get pissed. We like to laugh a lot and have a good time when we get pissed. ;)
Prego.
